huncowboy said:
Any stories of 777s losing and engine over the oean yet?
USA Today article "Finding a safe place to land."
Monday, December 4, 2000
By Alan Levin
USA TODAY
SHEMYA ISLAND, Alaska -- If this tiny speck of tundra is known at all, it is for fierce winds and top-secret intelligence work. Virtually unseen is the vital role it plays in aviation safety.
An airport here and a constellation of equally remote airstrips have for decades served as last-ditch havens for fliers traversing the northernmost regions of the globe.
But as the number of lengthy flights over these areas soars and airlines clamber to open routes over the North Pole to shave valuable time off flights from North America to Asia, the long-neglected rules governing these airports and the flights above them are under fire.
Some pilots and aviation experts contend that airports like the one on Shemya are not prepared to handle a major emergency. Indeed, severely injured passengers on a Chinese jet that made an emergency landing on Shemya in 1993 lay on stretchers for hours before being transferred to mainland hospitals. At least two people died in the incident.
And, the critics say, rules governing such things as how much fire
protection and medical equipment are needed on the jets that ply these routes are out of date and inadequate. ''You have very few options on the polar route,'' says Joan Sullivan Garrett, whose company MedAire Inc. links flight crews with doctors to handle in-flight emergencies.
A related issue already has sent bitter shock waves through the aviation world. In January, after an angry debate, the Federal Aviation Administration granted carriers more flexibility when flying two-engine jets over the north Pacific. The fight pitted European regulators against the FAA, Airbus Industrie against Boeing, its rival in the production of large jets, and some pilot groups against their employers.
No one is saying the long flights over the world's most desolate regions pose a dire risk. But, just like the island of Shemya, officials say this obscure issue is of huge significance to the future of long-range flights.
Aviation powerhouses like the FAA and Boeing agree. Though both point to the excellent safety record of these flights, they have endorsed a re-examination of the rules. Earlier this year, the FAA assembled dozens of industry experts on a panel to recommend improvements.
When visibility is zero
At 300 feet above Shemya's runway, visibility is zero. The Boeing 727 supply jet rumbles in amid the hiss of compressed air in the cockpit and the whine of jet engines outside. But the milky white veil covering the windshield creates an impression that the jet has stopped.
Capt. Jon Bergstedt, a pilot for Reeve Aleutian Airways, routinely flies in conditions like these. In summer months, low-level clouds and rain blanket the island. In winter, unpredictable, heavy winds whip the treeless landscape.
Delivering a load of passengers and cargo to this intelligence-gathering outpost, Bergstedt has descended as low as the rules allow in bad weather and is heading toward a radio beacon at the end of the runway. Before he can land, though, he or crewmembers Steve Wooliver and Trig Bjorklund need to
catch sight of the runway. With only enough fuel for one pass, it doesn't look good.
Co-pilot Wolliver opens his mouth to announce an aborted approach but before he can speak, Bjorklund barks, ''Landing lights.'' A pier holding a string of lights pops out of the mist to the left.
In rapid-fire maneuvers, the pilot turns toward the runway, then banks back to the right to line up with the rapidly approaching 10,000-foot strip of concrete. The runway is visible now, but with each turn it appears to rock wildly back and forth in the windscreen. Within seconds, Bergstedt straightens out, and the jet kisses the pavement.
''That would be something coming in there in a 777 with one engine,'' Wolliver says a few moments later.
Within range of a runway
That is just what the twin-engine Boeing 777, perhaps the world's
most-advanced jet, is designed to do. And if an engine failure or other problem occurred midway between North America and Asia, Shemya is one of the emergency strips pilots would head toward.
An engine failure on a 777 is extremely unlikely. But it does happen -- 10 times in the 117,800 long-range flights from June 1995 though last March. An engine on American Airlines Flight 129 from San Jose, Calif., to Tokyo stopped shortly after takeoff on April 4, forcing an emergency landing in San Francisco.
Under FAA rules, airlines that cross the Pacific with two-engine jets have to take a route that stays within about 1,500 miles of the nearest approved ''diversion'' airport so that the aircraft would fly no more than three hours on a single engine. If an engine died over the ocean, the pilot would fly toward the closest approved airport -- north toward Alaska, south to Midway Island, northwest toward Russia or west toward Japan.
On Shemya, pilots landing in an emergency would find a long runway and special aircraft firefighting equipment, but not much more. A few aging aircraft hangers line the airport, which normally shuts down at 5 p.m. Flights to Anchorage, the nearest large city, take at least five hours. Because of rapid changes in weather, the Air Force warns visitors that they could easily be stranded here for days.
Flying this route with a jet like the 777 would have been unthinkable just 15 years ago. The foundation of safe flight holds that any critical system -- with engines at the top of that list -- needs a backup. For most of the jet age, flying on one engine alone was to be avoided at all costs.
But modern engines have become hundreds of times more reliable than the jets introduced in the 1960s. A 777 engine fails about five times during every 1 million hours of flight, and most of those failures occur right after takeoff. The chances two engines would sputter to a stop in a 3-hour span are extremely remote. Such a failure has never caused an accident.
Just to make sure, the FAA mandates numerous safety measures on two-engine jets that fly across the oceans or other rugged terrain.
In January, the FAA finalized rules that allow even longer diversions on two-engine jets. Over the north Pacific, specially equipped 777s can now fly routes that are nearly 3½ hours from an airport, or about 1,700 miles.
Boeing and three airlines -- United Airlines, American Airlines and
Continental Airlines -- wanted the change to give them the flexibility to keep flying their regular routes when bad weather socked in diversion airports three hours away. The Air Line Pilots Association, which represents pilots for United and other carriers, supported the plan. So far, only a handful of such flights have been flown.
The proposal drew vehement objections from Airbus -- which sells the A340, a four-engine competitor to Boeing's 777 that is capable of similar flights -- as well as American Airline pilots and European regulators. They said that the change posed an unacceptable additional risk and argued that, because
the FAA did not take into account wind, the maximum diversion could be even longer than the new policy envisioned.
An analysis by a consortium of European aviation firms found that a 207-minute flight on one engine, the maximum length permitted by the new FAA policy, posed an unacceptable risk. The extended flights would set back safety enhancements 15 years, the group said.
''An accident will become a real possibility,'' Yves Roncin, an expert with the European Association of Aerospace Industries, wrote in a letter to the FAA last year.
Airbus, which also sells twin-engine jets, has so far not applied to extend the length of flights that its jets can take over water.
<<Continued>>
